Jonathon Muncie is a PhD candidate in the Graduate Program in Bioengineering at the University of California San Francisco and University of California Berkeley. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan, graduating Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor in Science and Engineering in Biomedical Engineering.
Jonathon is interested in the role that mechanical forces play in regulating cell differentiation and tissue development. In the lab of Dr. Valerie Weaver at UCSF, he developed a method for patterning colonies of human embryonic stem cells in defined geometries on compliant hydrogels. This method provides control over both the tissue-scale geometry of the stem cell colonies and the elasticity of the hydrogel substrate. Jonathon is using this method to study how cellular tension, regulated by colony geometry, affects cell fate in a model of early human development.
While an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, Jonathon worked in Dr. Allen Liu's laboratory to study the effects of fluid flow on clathrin-mediated endocytosis in a microfluidic system. He also engineered lipid vesicles capable of recapitulating the initial events of the blood clotting cascade, contributing to the labs long-term goal of designing a synthetic platelet.
In 2016, Jonathon was awarded the Discovery Fellowship at UCSF.
